Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm the President of ABC. Welcome to the annual results announcement of ABC. It's a great pleasure to meet with the friends online, offline, investors and analysts, and friends from the media. I'd like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your support, trust, and interest in the development of ABC. With that, I'd like to present to you the management of ABC. Vice President of ABC and Executive Director, Mr. Lin Li, Mr. Wang Wenjin, Vice President of ABC, and Mr. Wang Zhiheng, Vice President of ABC, and our Board Secretary, Mr. Liu Qing. Some of the senior management are participating from a meeting online. With that, I'd like to present to you the business performance, business strategies and outlook for 2026 of ABC.
In terms of the business highlights which you are interested in, 2025 is the last year of the 14th five-year plan. It is a year for the new progress for ABC. In the past year, we, guided by the socialism with Chinese characteristics and strengthened overall leadership of the party and implement the relevant decisions, arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, deeply practiced the political and people-oriented nature of financial work, and firmly grasped the main line of preventing risks, promoting high-quality development, made overall efforts in our aspects providing more powerful and effective service to real economy. Achieving steady progress in business operations with the highly effective service main characteristics of our business. Our steady improvement in, and a steady progress in the business operations.
First, stable profits. ABC's net profit and operating income continue to maintain a double-digit growth, reaching CNY 292 billion and CNY 725 billion respectively, a growth rate of 3.3% and 2.1% respectively. Compared with three quarters growth rates increased by 2 basis points and 0.1 percentage points respectively, NIM 1.28% among top in the peers. Average return on total assets 0.63%. Weighted average return on net assets 10.16% with a capital risk ratio of 17.93% with excellence of our business. Total assets reached CNY 48.8 trillion with a growth rate of 12.8%.
New loans and financial investment in local and foreign currencies total to CNY 4.7 trillion. Service to the real economy is a leading industry and the loan growth rate was 8.9%. Liability business continued to maintain a good development with a deposit growth rate of 7.7%. An average daily increase in RMB deposits ranked first among the comparable peer steady deposits. It's consistently improving, and duration of low confirmed currency deposits at the end of last year was 0.58%, the best among the comparable peers. We are the only bank to achieve deposit growth in RMB loans for seven consecutive years with high quality loans.
NPL ratio of domestic banks declined for five consecutive years and further decreased by 3 basis points in 2025, remained a relatively low level of 1.7%, at 1.27% industry. The special mention loan ratio 1.39%, and overdue loan ratio 1.25%. The difference between the NPL and overdue loan ratio registered a negative growth, which was also the only bank in comparable peers which exhibited a loan ratio lower than the non-performing loan ratios. ABC , its loan balance continued to above CNY 1 trillion, increase of CNY 39.6 billion over the previous year.
Provision coverage ratio was 292.5%, with both indicators of the balance of loan provision and provision coverage ratio ranked first among the comparable peers. The total return is very high since its listing in 2010, considering the comprehensive return was stock price increase and the dividend. The annualized average returns of investors in A-shares and H-shares reached 12% and 10% respectively. In the next three years, that is from 2023- 2025, the returns reached 24.8% and 41% respectively. In terms of dividends, the board of directors proposed a distribution of final dividend for 2025 with a rate of CNY 1.3 per share, tax included.
Inclusive of the dividend already distributed, amounts to HKD 2.495 per share and CNY 2.495 per share, tax included. Dividend payout ratio was 30%. We'll have a more resilient and more sustainable development. Last year, we did the work in the following five aspects. First, we stick to our main businesses. That is providing service for the agriculture, that is agricultural areas and farmers. We consolidated the foundation for business development and improved the quality and efficiency of providing service to rural -related areas and build a differentiated competitive advantages.
The loans from the county-level regions balance reached CNY 1 trillion for four consecutive years, and the balance reached CNY 10.9 trillion. The balance accounting for more than 40% of the total loans. The balance in the county- levels has doubled during the 14th five-year plan period. Deposit balance was an CNY 14.3 trillion increase of CNY 1.23 trillion over the end of the previous year and contributed more than 52% to the increase of deposits of the whole bank. Specifically, our channels for serving clients have been further improved. Among the 22,800 branches of the bank, 56% are located in county-level cities and rural towns or townships.
ABC is the only large state-owned bank with full coverage of county-level outlets. In recent years, we have further shifted the focus of our service to the grassroots levels, extending the reach of our services, continuously improving, completing them. We have a six-in-one service system, namely our physical outlets, self-service machines, mobile banking, rural service stations, mobile service vehicles in remote banks, to form them into one. Which continuously enhance our service capabilities to provide service to every village and household. Last year, we moved another 179 outlets to townships, built 1,742 rural service stations, in which our product shelves.
We have also made a great effort to build a product and a service system to 10 major financial areas, including green finance and targeted poverty alleviation finance, innovated and promoted inclusive products such as agricultural park loans, technology loans, and professional farmer loans, specifically serving the differentiated diversified financing needs of agricultural areas and farmers. We have developed 43 products across all industries and the 208 regional characteristic products and dedicated products to cover key areas of rural revitalization. By leveraging technological means, we have continuously optimized the loan application process for farmers, actively promoting on-site and remote work mode, further enhancing the convenience and accessibility of rural financial services with the balance of the Huinong e-Loan reaching CNY 1.84 trillion and fourfold increase during the 14th five-year plan period.
Grain and important agricultural products have been increased. Along rural industries, rural development and related fields grew by 20.3%, 19.5%, and 9.6% respectively, and 832 poverty-stricken counties and 160 key counties for rural revitalization has seen faster loan growth than the average growth rate of the entire bank. Second, we stick to the essence of finance and building new advantages in business development by implementing national strategies and serving the real economy. We insist on serving the real economy as our fundamental purpose. We see the trend of the new and old driving forces transformation and industrial upgrading, continuously optimize allocation of financial resources, while serving a high quality development of the real economy also strive to promote our own high quality development.
In 2025, the loan balance of ABC reached CNY 27.13 trillion, an increase of CNY 2.23 trillion over the end of the previous year. Among them, personal loans, inclusive loans, and private enterprise loans took the lead in reaching CNY 9 trillion, CNY 4 trillion and CNY 7 trillion respectively. Our financial investment was CNY 16.3 trillion, an increase of CNY 2.47 trillion over the previous year. We made every effort to serve stable investment and consumption with the support of financing work, that is, the implementation of the national strategy and the key areas in ensuring national strategy projects. We are also are going in th e front, and key projects are ranked among the best in the comparable industry.
Increases and growth rates of the consumer loans were also ahead of the peers. Personal consumption loans, including credit cards, have a growth rate of 9% and a balance reached CNY 1.45 trillion. We continue to strive for the Five Priorities of Finance, promote more financial resources, invest in the productivity, growing development, inclusive finance and provide loans to the SMEs. Other key areas, we strengthen the key areas and weak links. The balance of the technology finance loan, foreign finance loan, inclusive finance loan reached CNY 4.7 trillion, CNY 5.93 trillion, CNY 4.35 trillion respectively. Growth rate of 10%, 20.1%, 18.7% and 20.9% respectively.
The number of inclusive loan clients ranked first among comparable peers. Total supply of inclusive finance is the largest with the widest service coverage, further consolidating the leading bank's position with the strongest and sustainable development capability. In the field of pension finance, number of physical and electronic Social Security card users ranked first among peers, and the number of clients and amount of individual pension service are also among the best in the comparable peers. The loan for the pension industry reached CNY 23.16 billion or 108.5%. We actively serve higher level of opening up, introduce a work plan to stabilize foreign trade and investment, actively supports the cross-border use of RMB, and helps to diversify the trade markets and integrate domestic and foreign trade.
Third is to focus, put the client first, expand the new space for business development while enhancing client service capabilities. Clients are the foundation of our bank. We always take client development as a fundamental and strategic task. We will press ahead with the project to expand the client base, improve service for corporate clients with and group and tier the management personal loans, improve the service model driven by digital plus model, and continuously enhance refined and comprehensive client service. Client base has been expanding, ranging 896 million for personal clients and remaining the largest in the industry.
Non-bank financial assets on AUM for personal clients amounted to CNY 24.7 trillion, increase of CNY 2.4 trillion at end of previous year with 13.29 million corporate clients, an increase of 1.16 million clients from the end of previous year and ranked among the top in the peers. We had 609 million personal mobile banking clients with over 276 million monthly active users and over 292 million monthly active user on mobile devices, maintaining industry leading growth rates on both metrics. The quality and efficiency of customer service continue to improve.
With a focus on better meeting customers' financial needs, we continuously enrich and expand our product offerings and portfolios in areas such as deposit credit, wealth management to strengthen service, synergy between commercial banks and investment banks, and domestic foreign currencies, financial and non-financial service, and advancing rural service project. We have been steadfast in promoting customers' rights and interests, making our customer service more diverse and personalized. We have strengthened our professional service capabilities. We have improved our employee training system, provided a classified professional training to strengthen the team on wealth management and providing solid support for our client service. Our total number of wealth management advisors have reached 119,000, increase of 6,000 from the end of last year. Fourth, we have deepened the reform and innovation by deeply integrating business, technology, data.
We have created a new impetus for business development. We have actively embraced the new round of a technological revolution, deeply advanced the construction of smart banks, intensified data empowerment and AI applications, striving to transform technological innovation, a key variable into the greatest increment for high-quality development, making the application base for our technological innovation more solid. Accelerating the building of AI plus capability systems such as data technology, security, providing strong support for the larger scale and inclusive application of AI, making the approach of digital operations more mature. Effectively reducing the burden and workload, empowering grassroots outlets to become more significant. Fifth, strengthen bottom line thickening and strengthen the safety cushion and buffer for business development.
We always take the risk management and control as our long-stop task , and continuously enhance professional capability in building risk management, serve as the ballast for maintaining financial stability. We continue to improve the comprehensive risk management system, strengthen forward-looking risk identification and enhance risk disposal response in key areas and consolidating foundation of the internal control and compliance management. Third, an outlook for 2026. We have confidence from two sources or aspects.
First, the economic performance, macroeconomic performance is stable and growing, creating a favorable macro environment for the development of ABC. The outline of our 15th five-year plan have provided the guideline for our development. China's economy has a solid foundation, with many advantages and a strong resilience and long-term positive support conditions and basic trends with great potential have not changed. With the implementation of the supporting measures of the 15th Five-Year Plan are gradually implemented, the economic growth rate will continue to maintain within a high reasonable rate. We will continue to have the strong foundation.
This has laid a solid foundation for us to make further breakthroughs. Over the past five years, we have thoroughly studied and implemented General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on the financial work, and we have actively pursued this path of financial development with Chinese characteristics. We have also expanded our product and service quality, and also optimized our team building capacities, and also cemented our risk control efforts. This has given us a very good starting point. Dear friends, ABC's defining feature is agriculture. This year marks our 75th anniversary. During the past 75 years of ups and downs, we have always been resonating with our national strategy and also standing in unity with billions of customers and sharing value with broad investors.
2026 is the first year of the 15th plan, and the new era calls for new responsibilities and also the new journey requires new actions. ABC will continue to strengthen our party leadership and also uphold a correct view of achievements. We will continue to lay a solid foundation and contribute to the starting chapter of the 15th Five-Year Plan and create more value for shareholders, customers, and investors in all sectors of society. Next, let's head into the Q&A session. I would like to invite the Secretary of BOD, Ms. Liu Qing, to be the moderator.
Now please just give one question only, and before you give your question, please identify yourself. Now, the first question, please, on site. The lady on my left, first row, please.
Thank you so much. I'm from Xinhua News Agency. After hearing the introduction, we can see that even though the overall external environment has been quite complicated, but ABC has reaped very good operating outcome, and especially in the capital market. I'm just wondering, what is the outlook of ABC in next year, such as in NIM and also in the net profit? What are the main driving forces?
Well, I will take that question. I have just shared with you, in 2025, even though we have a very complex business environment, our revenue growth has remained resilient and also operating income has maintained positive growth for two years running. Our net profit has also been maintaining positive growth as well. Also, it is now on an upward trajectory for better growth.
If we look at this over the long term, the performance or the financial performance of ABC is quite good and also remarkable. Our net profit growth has been leading the industry for six years, and operating income has also been leading among our peers, creating new historical highs and this has showed the growth and the bonus of the market. We believe that the 15th five-year plan has given us even more confidence. I have just shared with you that the senior management is quite confident about better operating performance in 2026. From the performance of the first two months of 2026, where operating income or say where overall operations have maintained stable growth and also positive trend, corporate loans increased by CNY 1.1 trillion, achieving a year-on-year growth.
NIM has, or say, net interest income has also turned positive year-on-year, which is an inflection point in the first quarter. This has further confirmed that our operating income will continue to be put on an upward trend, laying a solid foundation for the profitability across the entire bank. In the next phase, we will keep our strategic focus while providing better financial services. We'll continue to coordinate our pricing strategies while deepening our efforts to control costs and improve efficiency and continue the current solid momentum, and we will focus on the following three aspects. First of all, we will continue to drive the positive growth of net interest income, and we also strengthen our efforts to make sure that we have a positive growth in net interest income.
In terms of scale, we will continue to issue more loans and also contribute to the real economy, and we will also optimize the structure of our assets and also strengthen refined management and improve the marginal returns of the assets. We will continue to consolidate our customer base and flexibly arrange our next efforts in driving down cost of deposits. Secondly, we will continue to expand the growth space of non-interest income. We will leverage the consumption policies and try our best to satisfy the diverse demands of our customers and seize the opportunities of the capital market and amplify the service supply for wealth management products. On the other hand, we will also strengthen our analysis of the market and flexibly determine our trading or transaction strategies as well as the allocation of different categories of assets.
Thirdly, we will better control risks and costs to better coordinate development and security and ensure that we put credit risks under control and try our best to drive down risks and costs. We will also strengthen more intensive and refined management model to reduce non-essential expenses. Anyway, we will try to achieve higher profits to better costs. We are further confident about the performance in 2026. So much from me.
Thank you so much, President Wang. Next question, please, on site. The friend on my right, please.
Thank you so much, our senior management members. I would like to ask you a question about loans. In 2025, the credit loans has increased pretty fast, and in retail and county- level loans, we have seen very good growth. Could you walk us through the plans or, say, the growth targets for credit loans in 2026? And what are the key areas that you will focus on? Thank you.
I will continue to take your question. In 2025, we have actively implemented important and major strategies at the national level. We have aligned ourselves with demands of the real economy, and the overall volume of our loans has shown better structure and also bigger volume. In terms of the total amount, I've shared with you that we have a total of CNY 2.23 trillion newly added loans. In terms of structure, we have invested more in agricultural, agriculture-related loans and as well as rural revitalization services. We have also injected a greater momentum into five priorities and improving quality and efficiency.
This year is the starting year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, and in the government work report, we have a GDP growth target of 4.5%- 5%. We also want to build a strong domestic market to achieve technological self-reliance and also self-stressing efforts. There are a series of supporting projects as well as measures for rural revitalization. I believe that these are opportunities for commercial banks in credit placement. We will maintain our current intensity of credit to support the real economy, and the average growth rate would be roughly the same as last year. In the first two months of 2026, our economy is now rebounding, so we will seize the opportunity to focus on our national major strategies and credit deployment or credit placement has also achieved a very good start.
By the end of February, our bank-wide physical loan growth has achieved a year-on-year positive growth, and also this is a sign of good momentum for sure. Our green technology, our agriculture-related loans have registered positive growth, maintaining at leading average levels for comparable peers. In the future, we will continue to highlight the agriculture and rural areas and also farmers-related fields. We will focus on improving the large area grain yield improvement and also ensure that we produce new quality productive forces and strengthen financial services for links across the whole food chain, focus on specialty industry and key sectors, and also big customers and important projects. We will make it bigger and better, especially in financial services such as the issuance of farmer loans to ensure that we have stable growth in loans in 2026.
Secondly, we will focus on two different areas such as domestic demand. We will continue to lend more support to major projects on transportation and energy, ensure that we have supporting financing services for a new round of policy financial tools or instruments. We will also align our efforts with traditional consumption models and also emerging new consumption models such as green consumption. We will implement the fiscal policies to maintain a leading growth momentum for consumer loans. Thirdly, we will support the construction of a modern industrial system, such as we will sort out the customer list and then cultivate new quality productive forces, step up or speed up our technological innovation to support or contribute to emerging industries' development. We will also focus on industry green transformation, green development, low carbon and green transition of energy and other key sectors.
This will mean that we will improve the credit placement in green sectors and also the proportion of green loans. Fourthly, we will focus on inclusive SME loans and establish a work coordination mechanism. We'll continue to increase support for SMEs and coordinate development and security, consolidate our leading advantages in inclusive finance, and make sure that we cater to the demands of our residents in education, healthcare, and so many others.
Thank you so much, President Wang. Next, I would like to ask for the gentleman on the right, the lady on the right for a question.
Thank you so much for the opportunity. I know that commercial banks are under pressure, but ABC has maintained very stable asset quality. What measures have you taken in order to manage and prevent risks? I would like to know about the NPL formation rate as well as your key focus in both retail and also corporate, sectors.
Vice President Lin, please take the question.
Thank you for that question. From the perspective of the commercial bank, in the future two, three years, I think that the watershed should lie in the ability of risk management, because the products can be very homogenous and also the services can also be quite similar. Even AI models can be pretty much the same in the future. There will be definitely differences between commercial banks in risk management and provision efforts. That's why we think that we should do a good job in risk prevention and management. For ABC, what did we do in that regard? Well, I think that it can be summarized in the following points. Generally speaking, it can be summarized as really doing hard work and getting our foot or our feet on the ground.
ABC has placed risk prevention and management as an internal theme of our financial work, and we have been building our strong foundation and also cementing the current base for risk management. We have been quite prudent in our operations. We think that it, we can't say that the commercial banks are too careful or too much careful in their operations. Firstly, we have highlighted the role of quality and efficiency. Fourthly, we have to be problem-oriented. Fifthly, we have to uphold our bottom lines by integrated risk management and control. With a forward-looking reflection capabilities, we can proactively control our risks and ensure good asset quality overall. Just now, President Wang had shared with us the overall business or the overall situation at ABC.
In 2025, our NPL ratio stood at 1.27%, down by 0.03% compared with the end of last year. The NPL ratio for five years running has been on a downward trend. The special mention loan ratio was at 1.39%, down by 0.01 from the previous beginning of the year. Overdue loan ratio 1.25%, maintaining the lowest among the comparable peers. The difference between the NPL and overdue loan was always at negative. Also, our credit balance of CNY 1.057 trillion. We believe ABC is the only bank with a credit balance exceeding CNY 1 trillion . From a prudent perspective, our credit provision increased by CNY 39.6 billion.
The provision for loan loss ratio reached 292.55%, maintaining ABC at a strong risk resilient position. In terms of the non-performing loan formation ratio of corporate loans decreased compared to last year. The NPL ratio of inclusive retail loans has increased compared to last year. NPL ratio of the whole bank for the whole year was 0.89%.
We do believe the asset quality is well under control and similar to last year and also the formation ratio of NPL has been maintained below 1%, which is relatively quite low. For the loans for the SMEs balance reached CNY 3.93 trillion, an increase of CNY 700 billion from the year beginning, and NPL formation ratio 1.54%. For the inclusive finance or the credit cards, including rural households, which is at the key of our risk control. If we also incorporate them, then the balance of our retail loan balance or loan was CNY 9.26 trillion, an increase of CNY 444.5 billion from the year beginning, with NPL ratio of 1.34%.
The main indicators of inclusive retail loans maintained leading position among the peers. It is noteworthy that credit card business in terms of serving consumption, boosting development, and advancing quality and quantity has performed quite well. Our credit card loan increment or increase and asset quality are the best among our peers. Also we apply the innovation and also the systematic thinking and relative philosophies to build a new management measures for the credit businesses. We further build a comprehensive risk management system for the inclusive retail business that we have done in the following six aspects for inclusive retail business. The first one is to build a stratified marketing system and also to promote or roll out the new business models.
We have the top-level design of the head office from the provincial branch. We have the sandbox operation at the city-level branches. We have the template of marketing for our outlets and branches, focused on local conditions, industrial clusters and professional markets, and also have a county-specific system. We draw a financial ecosystem map or roadmap adapting to the needs of the different areas, adapting to the local conditions, and also the formulating credit plans. We're scoring high-quality customers, and we have SOP, so as to change the scattered, inefficient, and a passive customer acquisition model. We build an active batch-based and a source customer acquisition business development model.
Second, we adhere to the idea of minimization or focus on the petty loan accounts, and also match the credit line with the customer's demands, and also expand our business or while also have system control, so as to enhance our service ability or quality to the small and medium-sized customers to enhance the accessibility and the coverage of our financial service, while at the same time, we give up using a simple model to measure or calculate the credit line, so as to put our risk within our risk tolerance. We take the households at our center or as a priority and also build new vision of management. We have a unified credit approval and also coordinated management.
To be more specific, for the same family business, for the SME legal persons and business owners and their relatives or friends who are in the personal or individual business consumption and credit card businesses are putting under the same umbrella of management. We have a cross-line and a cross-product coordination so as to effectively prevent the under standard eligibility of the customers for certain products, because for some of the products, they have the differentiated threshold for the eligibility of the customers. We also prevent the overlap of the credit granting, but also prevent the risk of excessive credit granting. Fourth, we integrated online and offline businesses. We leverage on the models or the digital tools, but we are not over-relying on the digital tools.
We insist on the principle of enhancing people's awareness, understanding, and also have on-the-spot investigations for due diligence, while at the same time we enhance the businesses, tax, credit history, private fund, as well as other third-party data to do the customer or KYC business. We have a cross-check of the authenticity of our commerce customers, so as to ensure that the fund they use is for their real purpose or business. We are not just following the trend. We also use OpenClaw to process and analyze the data in an automated way and to generate a KYC report so as to make our credit approval and review process more efficient, and also have a process and procedure constraints and build a business mechanism. What is key here is to separate the approval from the credit granting.
We separate the roles, because in practice, for some of the inclusive retail loan granting, the approval and the lending are put together. In our practice, we insist on the online SME inclusive loan, we separate the approval of the business, and also we separate the roles between the approval and the loan or disbursement, so as to form checks and balances in the process of credit granting. We'll also make up for the shortcomings of the decisions for the models, and also we prevent any one person having a say in everything, and we say no to any form of intermediary person participating in the marketing or handling the business.
If some of the illegal or inappropriate intermediaries or agencies participate in that, they will bring a lot of shock to the business of the bank. Six, we empower on the technology and also it enhance our risk management capabilities empowered by technologies, meaning on the model process, identification and system real-time early warning. We use OCR recognition and GPS positioning and also cash flow clearing and AI intelligence and other technologies to do the improved ability of anti-fraud. Also relying on big data or a large language model, we focus on the new loans, professional debtors, or the intermediary loan companies and other risk characteristics, consistently optimizing the risk control model and before, during, and after the lending to improve the accuracy of our early alerting, so as to ensure the stability of our asset quality.
We will further enhance our risk management and mitigation in a more systematic way in inclusive retail business. Moving forward, we'll firmly establish appropriate attitude to our performance and do our own job well for the right purpose. We will stick to a prudent and a steady risk appetite and also put the risk prevention and management as a priority. It is very promising that asset quality will continue to be stable and maintain a relatively leading position among our peers. Why we are so confident? First, we have a more profound and comprehensive full-fledged risk management control system. To be more specific, we have a credit management, we have online/offline coordination and separate the credit approval and credit granting business.
We also have a unified credit management and also to enhance accountability, we're using the smart tools and to have a unified monitoring and supervising. In Chongqing, ABC set up a head office level digital risk management center for the purpose of enhance our monitoring of early warning identification and also early check and dispose of the credit risk of inclusive retail business, and also to enhance our management overdue loans and enhance the disposal of NPAs, and also enhancing the notification of the overdue or when the loans are coming due. Here we enhance the smart disposal platform 2.0 version, and also to enhancing the dispatched transfer or disposal of NPA, enhancing the efficiency of the diversified NPA disposal channels.
Please rest assured, though inclusive retail loans are small, scattered, or there are a large amount of them, but we will further make a health check so as to clarify and also have an order, well-organized management of this type of a business. Also for the risk management of key areas that has been further improved in terms of efficiency. In terms of the retail loan as at the end of 2025, NPL ratio in the industry remain unchanged from the previous year, and newly NPL has been decreased year- on- year.
We'll continue to adhere to a housing-specific policy and approach, project-specific plan, and step up risk control for large clients, focus on key links such as funds, assets, equity, strictly managing the account, presale funds, and separating the operation from project funds. We'll use the 16 financial measures for real estate and whitelist loan continuation. We will provide our credit support for the high quality or better housing projects, and also will enhance the credit measures. We will not expand our business or lendings in this area in a blunt way, and also use the policies to replace implicit debts.
We have to optimize the structure of the existing debts to lower our risk exposure, and also have a market-oriented, rule-based, and appropriate financial approach to increase our financing in these areas so as to safeguard the bottom line of not increasing the implicit debt. We will enhance our structures in a preemptive way that is very important. We will reduce the low quality or inefficient customers, but at the same time support the building of the modernized industrial system. We'll focus on the structural risks. We will take preemptive measures for the overcapacity. We will not do the resolution, so as to ensure the credit quality.
Thank you very much for it. Mr. Lin, for the question. Next question, please.
Thank you. I'm from Economic Daily. I'm Yu Yong. My question about wealth management. The personal customer is around CNY 896 million, which is leading among the peers and past several years. Customers have high demands on wealth management with the fluctuation of their capital, and people have a demand of the capital allocation. As Lin said, ABC rolled out a lot of innovative measures in wealth management. Could you please elaborate more on the innovative measures on wealth management and what are the plans moving forward? Thank you for the question.
Ms. Lin, please.
Thank you for the question. As an entity or bank connecting people's saving or household saving to the circulation of economy, there is a lot of room for us to or potential for us to tap into in wealth management. This is an important measure to serve to boost China's financial strength. Wealth management is important part for the financial system. By developing strength in wealth management, we can help to cultivate potential capital increase, the direct financing, and also to enhance the efficiency and quality of the financial service to the real economy and the high-quality development. It also protects people's wellbeing. Next, it can also improve the residents' income.
Wealth management can expand their income generation channels, and it can also get the public to participate more broadly in the capital market and then share in the fruits of economic development. Thirdly, it is an intrinsic requirement for high quality development of commercial banks. Wealth management features a light capital, stable returns, and sustainability. It is an important path for commercial banks to transition from scale expansion to value creation. ABC has been people-oriented in recent years, and we placed wealth management business development as a very important priority, and we have deepened our strategy for integrated and two-wing approach of retail development. Basically, it's all about customer development. The two wings refers to wealth management and digital transformation or transition. With our forward-looking layout, we have a forward-driven financial development system to cement the development for operating income.
First of all, we have upheld value-driven approach and also a people-oriented model. The nature of our management approach is to have an asset allocation with customer as the center. We want to create value and also provide allocation service strategies. We hope that we wanna strive to become reliable, planner or say family financial advisor for our clients. Another one is comprehensive service capability. By the end of 2025, the personal financial assets across the entire bank has reached CNY 24.7 trillion. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the number has increased by nearly CNY 10 trillion, ranking our stocks at the forefront of the industry. If we look at the latest figures, we can see that it is now exceeding CNY 25.4 trillion.
In terms of assets and liabilities, ABC's personal asset deposit and also personal loan scale all rank first in the industry. We have the most deposits, loans, and also the largest number of customers. We should be a very big and the preferred bank for a large number of customers. Secondly, we have optimized the asset allocation of customers and integrate that with advancing five priorities. In that regard, we have created an agricultural pension financial service platform, and in ESG, we have made comprehensive breakthroughs in crossing the CNY 100 billion threshold across different product lines. Thirdly, we have achieved the breakthroughs on multiple fronts. In the past five years, we have seen that our AUM has currently reached CNY 3.65 trillion.
During the 14th five-year period, the total customer volume has increased by nearly CNY 2 trillion. All of these has put us also at the forefront of the entire banking industry. The wealth management products in agriculture sector has also exceeded CNY 2.2 trillion, leading comparable peers. More importantly, we have created over CNY 340 billion for investors. We are also doing our best to satisfy our consumer demands and also insurance demands. In terms of premiums and their agency, we have ranked first among our peers. ABC Life Insurance and also other institutions under ABC have all maintained a leading position among comparable peers. We have also adhered to a reform-driven progress approach. Wealth management and resource integration and innovation have all followed a similar path.
We have 896 million individual customers and also 22,800 outlets. We also have very big advantages in channels and customers. All of these have turned into the driving forces for ABC. First, we are dedicated to create a full spectrum of product portfolios to leverage the advantages of integrated operations. We need to build a multifunctional portfolio or say matrix that covers different diversified strategies wealth management products. Such as trust funds, precious metal investments, and more. Secondly, we have upgraded the market's open platform. We have to keep ourselves open, work with third-party institutions, and improve our coordination and step up management in scientific evaluation mechanisms, introduce quality resources from the market, and satisfy diversified and customized demands of the customers. Thirdly, we have to provide full life cycle customer companionship.
At different stages, we can ensure that we provide the right services such as wealth management and also family protection throughout the life cycle. We have to focus on developing comprehensive services for private businesses, and in this way, we can also have cross-border wealth management and also so many other options to satisfy our customers' diversified demands at multiple levels and also improve the accessibility and inclusiveness of our financial management services. Thirdly, we have been persisting in organizational-driven efforts to forge wealth management service capabilities. We ensure that professionals handle professional matters. A professional team can improve our efficiency and core competitiveness, which is in investment research and customer service. First of all, we have created an open integrated professional research system. We have also strengthened the group's investment source integration mechanism, built a multidisciplinary expert team, and gained market insights.
With a forward-looking and a culture of steady progress forward, we have implemented a very sound strategy for research, product introduction, marketing support, and asset allocation evaluation, and final review. We have also been insisting in reasonable expectations and qualified interactions. We know that for our wealth management subsidiaries, we require them to have a realistic pricing expectations. We also worked with these joint venture financial companies and we checked their figures to ensure that we have the best delivery with our customers. This can help us to ensure that we have a sound interaction between customer and the market. On the other hand, we also need to ensure that our team is also customer-oriented. There are many things involved in ABC's business, and our unique advantage is of course in Sannong or agriculture-related services.
Internally, we want to really integrate this service brand as improving ourselves every day. It's not that we want to just do easy work or just shout out empty slogans, but we want to see small improvements every day. Next, we insist on precision management and strengthen our structural optimization and capacity development. We already have a professional team comprising 119,000 customer managers and 6,000 wealth advisors. We have also focused on the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and emerging potential areas. We have implemented differentiated strategies according to local conditions with Benchmark and also in a total of 500 branches we have done so in private banks.
Also in some wealth management centers, we have definitely ensured that there is a tiered system for training to empower their training system and also service or professional service capabilities on the ground. Sometimes, we can go with bottom up, but other times we think that top-down approach is also a very effective channel. Now we have 120,000 customer managers and 6,000 financial advisors. They should be working like seeds, and they are providing services across the bank and serving our customers with their expertise. Fourthly, we have to uphold a digitalization-driven approach and let wealth management be one of our growth engines. By using digital means and intelligent approaches, we can ensure that we have online and offline wealth management coordination efforts in a multidimensional service network.
On one hand, we can improve our online and offline service efficiency, and these digital means can also empower our business, and we will continue to advance this all channel convenient and intelligent platform building. We will also make sure that we improve our capacity for all weather or round-the-clock responsiveness. We are also actively using AI. We're applying AI in different scenarios. We have an employee who is an AI model, and we will strengthen customer insights and intelligent layout as well as post-investment companionship throughout the entire life cycle. From the performance in 2025, we can see the great wealth management income has reached CNY 35.7 billion, and financial management fee income reaches CNY 251 billion. We should say that this is a very big resilience market.
Basically, we have shown strong resilience in our business and also high market recognition. Our business has remained very stable growth with little fluctuations. Many of our joint venture wealth management companies have
Proper expectations for their products. We have talked so much about what work we have done and data and statistics. At the end of the day, high quality development should be an all-hands on deck effort, which involves not only counter managers and also customer managers and wealth management managers and consultants, advisors, and even site tech personnel. Here, I would like to take this opportunity to, on behalf of the senior management, express our heartfelt gratitude to our staff who have weathered through many hardships and difficulties, and with their expertise and hard work, you have been fighting right at the forefront. Thank you so much for your diligence and hard work.
Okay, thank you so much, Lin Li, for that very encouraging words. Next, I would like to invite next question.
Thank you so much for the opportunity for asking a question. I'm [Xu Yuan], a financial analyst. I'm wondering about the situation in international business. We are now paying attention to business going global and also foreign trade, especially the growth structure and also the overall layout. With a new market environment and also new customer demands, ABC. How will ABC support key foreign trade enterprises to go global? And how will this contribute to your operating revenue and also your efforts for high-level opening up? Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for that question. I would like to invite President Wang for a response.
Thank you so much for your interest in international business. ABC has been earnestly implementing the decisions, arrangements of the Party Central Committee. With that, we have been cementing the interplay between domestic and overseas market and optimize our cross-border financial comprehensive service system. The international settlement business volume has reached about $16,400, an increase of 8% year-on-year. The international trade financing business volume has increased by 30% year-on-year. The growth rate is still very impressive. I think that, first of all, we have been helping or supporting businesses to go global. In ABC, we have presence in 18 countries and 21 overseas institutions. We also have one joint venture bank. More than half of them are in Belt and Road countries and regions.
This has aligned with our efforts to help businesses to go global. In 2025, we have continued to ensure that the interplay business has reached $118 billion, an increase of 13%. We have seen the financing business of BRI countries has reached $340 billion. We will continue to focus on certain areas and ensure that this leading business in this area can go global, and we will also lend support to international cooperation projects. Across the year, the agriculture related financing business has been handled for CNY 69 billion. Second, we strengthened our product innovation to support the development of new forms and the new models of trade.
It is safe to say that in recent years, the scale of the main players in the new forms and models for trade has been accelerated, become an important support for foreign trade. In response to the new characteristics of main players in the new forms and new models of trade, ABC has empowered with technology to innovate cross-border payment products. Many branches have completed the registration with SAFE and obtained the qualification for a direct cross-border e-commerce collection. Scale of our direct cross-border e-commerce collection business ranks among the top among the peers. Third, we have strengthened implementation of a regulation or regulatory policies, and we have enhanced the level of cross-border financial service. The reform of foreign exchange business development is an important measure for the institutional opening up of financial sector of China.
ABC has continuously promoted the reform in foreign exchange business development, expanded its scope, business volume, and a customer base, account for a large proportion of the whole bank, approaching 40%. The ability of promoting facilitation and preventing risks has been further enhanced. We have supported the international use of RMB. Cross-border RMB settlement volume reached CNY 3.82 trillion, an increase over 8.7% year-on-year. ABC will combine the relevant arrangements for expanding high-level opening up during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, continuing to enhance our support for the real economy on foreign trade and build a closed loop for cross-border financial service.
To serve the high-quality joint development of the Belt and Road Initiative, we will optimize the linkage mechanism at home and abroad, enhance supply of cross-border linkage products, and strengthen financial support for key overseas investment projects, and introduce a special work plan to support the development of the new land and sea passage in the West. We will also strengthen the service capability for settlement exchange of small currencies with the neighboring countries, and we'll optimize our cross-border financial system, service system, and support stable scale and optimal structure foreign trade, improve the service mechanism for our customers, high-end certified enterprises, and strengthen support for cross-border financial business in high-quality agricultural and rural entities, continue to support foreign trade enterprises under the financing coordination mechanism for SMEs, and carry out innovation and application cross-border e-commerce financing products, building diversified payment channels.
Third, strengthen the supply of cross-border financial services, enhance the level of cross-border trade investment and financing. We're furthering the reach of the system of exchange rate risk management products, supporting SMEs expanding foreign trade market. We will support the cross-border use of RMB in the real economy to play a more active role. We will also provide strong support for high-quality development of the entire bank. That's all. Thank you.
From the Xinhua Asset Management, I'm Zhang Yong. Thank you for the opportunity. My question is about inclusive finance. In the presentation, you mentioned inclusive finance as one of the five priorities of finance of China. It is also a highlight of the business performance of ABC. Looking forward to 2026, how ABC will maintain the good momentum in inclusive finance for sustainable development. Thank you.
Thank you very much for the question. I'd like to invite Mr. Wang Zhiheng, Vice President of ABC, to take this question.
Thank you very much for the question. Inclusive finance, covering a lot of industries, covering a lot of households, one of the five priorities of finance of China. It is also an important aspect of practicing or maintaining the political nature and a people-oriented nature of financial work. By 2025, ABC has thoroughly implemented the decisions, arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the central government, deepened the coordination mechanisms for supporting the financing of SMEs, and also enhanced the ability of our inclusive financial service in a comprehensive way. We have promoted the increase, expansion, and improvement of our inclusive finance.
We also achieved a high quality development and the quality and efficiency of providing inclusive financial service, mainly reflected on three aspects. First, we have the largest supply of inclusive credit supply. As at the end of 2025, the balance of inclusive finance loan registered CNY 4.35 trillion increase. Compared with the beginning of this year, the inclusive finance loan to SME is CNY 3.93 trillion. This year, we reached or exceeded CNY 4 trillion. The balance of the balance and also increase of inclusive finance loan are the first among the peers. We have the widest customer service coverage.
As at the end of 2025, ABC's inclusive SME customer with the loan from the bank, we have CNY 5.24 million, an increase of CNY 606,000 from the year beginning. The total number and increase of the customers has been first among the peers for three consecutive years. We are providing the truly inclusive finance service. Third, we excel in sustainable development capabilities, and we shifted from the digitalization. We are leading among the peers to do so. The asset quality of inclusive finance loan are also leading among the peers. The evaluation from the regulators leading among the peers. For 2026, as in the first year of the 15th five-year plan period, we'll work on the following three fronts, so as to ensure the inclusive finance business to maintain our good business momentum.
To be more specific, first, we'll make good use of the policy tools of the country. In the beginning of this year, relevant ministries of China rolled out the one package policy to support the coordination between fiscal and monetary finance, in particular, the fiscal subsidy for the SMEs and also the private investment guarantee plan that has brought new opportunities for the inclusive finance development. We will enhance the cooperation between the banks and governments, between the banks and the guarantee agencies, focus on new policy tools, optimize our business process and roll out featured products and offerings so as to lower down the cost of financing of our SMEs and increase the convenience so as to transform the policy benefits into the growth drivers for inclusive finance. Second, we'll make a good use of the institutions and mechanisms.
ABC will continue to give our role of the three on Sannong or the rural business departments and inclusive finance department and taking advantage of the dual wheel drive organizational structure. We are the only bank that has such kind of a dual wheel drive. That is a cooperation between the inclusive finance department and the rural business department. We will continue to leverage our advantages across urban rural areas with a large number of branches, outlets and extensive outlets coverages at the county level, cities. Also, that is also the uniqueness or the feature of ABC. We will continue to demonstrate our mechanism advantage that provide us with the willingness, ability and also expertise and also the courage to provide credit service to rural areas or related businesses.
We will promote digitalization. In our inclusive finance, we have the iteration upgrading and further enrich and improve our Nong Yin e-loan platform, and also build rural outlets and the inclusive finance e-loan to build an ecosystem of inclusive finance, and also roll out AI intelligent credit related business and also consistently improve the digital risk control system. ABC-Claw is for this purpose. We will solve the problems of the asymmetric information in inclusive finance and also we'll further enhance our risk control and management, provide a high quality service with a lower cost.
In 2026, ABC will continue to adhere to the general keynote of seeking progress while maintaining stability and coordinate risk prevention, development, and to serve people's wellbeing, focus on major strategies, key areas, weakness, so as to ensure the high-quality development of inclusive finance business. I stop here. Thank you.
Thank you for the answer. Next question, please.
Thank you for this opportunity. I'm Jiang Xing from the 21st Century Business News. Serving the rural revitalization is a positioning of ABC and also, that is, what ABC is good at. How ABC will enhance your competitive edge in providing service to the county-level areas.
Thank you very much for the question. Yes, providing rural revitalization is our main business, and it is also our highlights. For quite some time, it is a key focus area in our strategic development. In the past year, we stick to our main business and also to seize the opportunity of the urban and rural areas, provide a financial supply or credit supply, and also enhance the quality and efficiency of providing service to the agricultural areas and county economy. In the several aspects, first, with the contribution of a county- level, for our average daily deposit and loan increment has exceeded CNY 1 trillion. Proportion of increment increase increased by 10.5% and 1.4 percentage points, respectively, compared with the previous.
With this better structure, balance of rural household loan exceeded CNY 1.8 trillion with an increase of CNY 337.7 billion or 22.4%. In loans for key areas, growing production, rural industries, the growth rate of loans in these key areas is higher than the growth rate of all loans. Third, better quality and better efficiency. NPL ratio in county-level regions was very low with stable asset quality. Moving forward, we will have the document from the 15th five-year plan, and there are systematic arrangement for the revitalization by aligning our development to the national strategy. We rolled out in 2026 two consolidations and two insurance of providing service to rural related businesses.
One is to consolidate the proportion of the county-level loan in our overall loan portfolio, and also consider our advantage in providing service to the county- levels. Also ensure that we'll maintain the same intensity and also the overall stable asset quality. In the new year, our CNY 20 million, we'll continue to enhance the policy resource investment, enhance our ability of providing financial service. To be more specific, we'll do our good job well in the following five aspects. The first, we will provide service to the major projects in county- levels. The net growth of the county-level loan growth will continue to exceed CNY 1 trillion. In our businesses, in the agricultural-related business, we'll work ways to improve the agricultural-related projects and national water networks and also comprehensive agricultural production capability.
Taking the counties as a major vehicle, we will provide service to the major projects and also have list-based service and supporting financing. In terms of the agricultural enterprises, we'll focus on the leading agricultural industries and also leading agricultural technology companies providing full cycle financial service. In terms of the farmers who are farming households, we thoroughly carry out information finding or information collection for the co-farmers. Expand the tool box to farmers loans. Try to have more than CNY 2 trillion of balance of loans providing to farmers this year. Second, we'll further enhance our financial service capabilities, and we'll have a six-in-one service system. We will also further promote relocation of inefficient outlets to townships, accelerating sinking financial service to more rural areas.
This year, we'll strive to relocate 180 outlets to townships and also further increase in the development of agricultural assistance service stations throughout the combination of service stations, mobile service, further enhance our basic financial service. This year, we ensure we will build around 3,000. Last year we have really built around 1,700. This year we hope to have around 3,000 agricultural assistance service stations. We will innovate innovative financial products and models for agricultural businesses. We will roll out some new and diversified financial products, and also use the smart bank tools in providing service to the rural areas for rural businesses, and have the promoted application of a smart bank tools in the field of agricultural areas. Farmers promote on-site plus remote investigations, and build a system covering satellite, UAV, and ground IoT and other agricultural data, enhance our support data supply capabilities for agricultural businesses.
First, we will ensure that this normalized financial assistance will be put at a prominent position, and we have already formulated a package of differentiated policies. We will try to ensure that we lend targeted support, or especially policy support to people who have just been lifted out of poverty, and to ensure they will not return to their previous state. We will focus on national and provincial level rural revitalization strategies and projects, support underdeveloped areas in carrying out initiatives and form internal motivation for these assistance projects. Fifth, we will ensure the compliance and risk management work of the county- level regions, and ensure that we manage or prevent risks at the source, ensure that the loans will have a very strict risk identification and monitoring process, and also a series of risk monitoring models. Thank you so much. That's all from me.
Thank you so much, President Wang. Next question, please. Our friends online. You may ask your question.
Thank you for the opportunity. From JPMorgan Chase and banking analyst. My question is about the bond market. We have noticed that last year, the contribution of bond investment is actually pretty prominent. So what is your plans for this year's bond investment, and also what is your judgment on the bond interest rates for 2026?
President Lin, please.
Thank you for the question. From the perspective of the overall operation and management, we attach great importance to the financial market. With our understanding about the inherent laws of the financial market, basically the three positioning. First of all, the level of the market and the level of the professionalism, and also the level of talents. That's three positioning.
If we wanna summarize this, or the characteristics of ABC's financial market business, I think that it can be summarized in three keywords. First, big. Second, stable. Thirdly, good. First, large or big, it means that we are big in scale, and stable means that we have been upholding prudent operations. We are also very unwavering on that. The third point is, good or good quality. That means that we have pretty good outcomes, and it is also sustainable in the long run. You are interested in bond investment business. Here at ABC, we have been committed to serving the real economy. We focus on improving our capabilities and optimizing asset allocations, and better promoting and controlling risks to achieve high quality development. You have mentioned bond investment has contributed a lot to the performance of ABC last year.
I think that's inseparable from the external environment. Also at the head office, the investment decision-making committee, as well as the overall investment team, have made a very good analysis on the market, and they have a very targeted and precise investment strategy. Looking back on 2025, at ABC, we have done three things right. First of all, with our strategic focus, we have cemented our investment foundation. While serving the real economy, we have improved our ability to make evaluations of the entire market. As a core participant of the bond market, the financial market managers of ABC has over CNY 10 trillion in bond assets. Therefore, we really value our ability to make macro assessments of the financial market. We have been adhering to national policies as the guiding principle and also the economic laws as our guidance.
We have been making proper evaluations of the macro policy curves, as well as the dynamics of the economic environment, so that in the ups and downs or fluctuations of the market, we can identify opportunities and effectively rise up to the plate to manage and prevent risks. We have to seize the opportunity of interest rate fluctuations and to really understand its rhythms. In this, ups and downs and range fluctuations, take for example, before the interest rate or bond window, we proactively compressed our duration and to cushion against the risk of rising interest rates. With our professional capabilities and practice, we can effectively stabilize market expectations. Secondly, in our work, we have been serving strategic situation with our precise allocation. In dynamic balance, we have achieved a due increase in scale and efficiency.
Facing international economic and trade landscape adjustment in 2025, the global financial market has been facing an increasingly complex environment. We have to focus our strategic focus and strive to proactively use a sophisticated and refined management strategies and approaches to prevent and control risks, in particular with our comprehensive income target as the goal. The RMB bond scale has increased by CNY 2.4 trillion compared with the beginning of last year. We have achieved a solid growth in revenue and profit. We have a better revenue structure. Our duration allocation has been more balanced. This has given us an edge and cushion against the cyclical fluctuations of the market. Here, I think that it is important to highlight flexible or dynamic management and optimization of duration as well as the duration structure.
We have to constantly strengthen the monitoring of potential risks coming from interest rates and exchange rates, so as to improve the forward-looking analysis and prevention of bond investment or credit risks. Thirdly, as a major bank in China, we have been acting on national strategies and serving the real economy. We have advanced the five priorities. In the year 2025, ABC has taken the lead in underwriting national bonds and local government bonds and credit bonds, and altogether more than CNY 3.7 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 20 percentage points roughly. It is fair to say that we have supported the implementation of active fiscal policy and the real economy. We have also been focusing on five major priorities. We have been continuing increasing our investment in industrial bond in green and low carbon areas and technology innovations.
These directions represent our top priorities. By the end of last year, the green financing tool balance has maintained a leading position. We have also anchored efforts in rural revitalization strategy, where investment in that regard has increased by 300% and our underwriting share ranked first in the market for this year. Especially in the Sannong, where agriculture related sectors, we have precisely allocated our investment portfolios. You are also interested in the bond strategy for 2026. We deeply feel that 2026, because it is the starting year for the 15th five-year plan, it is a pivotal year for us to build momentum and step into high quality development as China's economy transforms itself.
Here at ABC, we have served the real economy, and we have coordinated development and security and ensure we have a better coordination at a macro level. We have been maintaining stability while seeking progress in our financial markets operations. All at the same time, we emphasize that we have to really delve into structural opportunities in these cycles. First of all, we have to improve our ability to assess different situations and support proper investment decision making. I think that you are also an expert in that regard, so I will not go into any details here. I believe that the logic of global asset pricing has been undergoing profound changes. I should say that all of you might feel it to some extent.
Internally or say domestically, our economy is now building momentum, and the pricing signals are expected to recover, and monetary policy remains not really accommodative. The government bonds has increased and supply has increased, and issuance has been also significantly front-loaded. Since the beginning of this year, the curve of the bond market yield has been more steeper. We estimate that the bond market will take on a volatile trend. Credit bond as well as green and ESG tech bond will be even more active. The fluctuating or volatile transaction or trading opportunities will coexist with those low volatility assets. In foreign markets, there will be increasing interplay between exchange rates, bonds, stock, and commodity markets. We have to have the overall picture in mind.
One important part of our work is to integrate all platforms at ABC and pull together the research power to conduct research across different markets, cycles, sectors and asset categories, so that even in complex fluctuating scenarios, we can really land ourselves on certainty. Secondly, we focus on national strategies to accurately empower the real economy. First of all, we have used or adopted a proactive fiscal policy. We have been deeply integrated into modern industrial system. Our focus are on some of the modern and strategic emerging industries, and also, we will intensify efforts to allocate more resources to high-quality industries. Thirdly, we will advance five priorities, especially in pension finance, inclusive finance, in green finance, and so on. Next, we will continue to optimize our investment portfolio while controlling and preventing risks. We will ensure prudent growth.
Thirdly, we will give full play to our advantage as a major bank in China. We will deepen services for domestic and overseas investors, and we will continue to cement our core commercial functions. Piggybacked on a full range of bond varieties and pricing capabilities, we will continue to improve bond market liquidity and stability and improve our cross-market allocation capabilities. On the other hand, piggybacked on the Bond Connect, Swap Connect, and so many others or other mechanisms, we will ensure we provide better services for cross-border investors and leverage the advantages of domestic and international linkage and support high-quality Chinese businesses to go global and extend their development channels. Fourthly, we will empower our digital transformation with science and technologies.
We have to uphold the leading role of science and technology and digital means in risk control and prevention, bond and research, and also so many other areas. We have to have whole chain integration, and we will ensure that AI is applied in different application scenarios, such as position management and pricing and trading, so that we can improve our quantitative analysis and also intelligent investment decision-making and empower the development or high-quality development of ABC.
Thank you so much, Mr. Li. Now come back to our friends on site. Next question, please.
Thank you so much for the opportunity. I am a financial analyst from CICC. What ABC has done in supporting the development of sci-tech businesses, what are your best practices, and how will you better develop the sci-tech finance business or the fintech business?
I think that I would like to take this question. We know that the technological finance is a very important part of our self-reliance and also the construction of a technological strong nation. It also involves the construction of a modern industrial system and new quality productive forces. Here at ABC, as of the end of 2025, we have already provided services to over 350,000 technology-based businesses, and the balance of for loans is CNY 47,000 . The annual growth rate is more than 20%. The coverage and the overall loan volume have been at the forefront at this industry.
To be more specific, we enhance ability of our technology and financial service, and ABC continue to carry out special actions to enhance the capability of technology and financial service in the whole bank. Focus on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, Yangtze River Delta area, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing and other highlands of technological innovation, establishing 25 provincial and municipal level technology and financial service centers, and building more than 300 specialized technology and financial branches, established a professional talent pool for technology and finance. We have allocated professional equity investment personnel to each subsidiary and built a large number of financial, technological, and industrial professionals in the ABC group. Second, we expanded the coverage of products and the services.
We have taken the lead, introducing guidelines for technology and finance credit policies, promote the five dimensions, six capabilities, and seven abilities credit evaluation model inclusive to technology enterprises, and build a full life cycle credit service system covering the institutes and the science parks and also the technology workers. In total, around 50 specific products and customers. For example, in providing service to the agricultural technologies, we rolled out the Agricultural Park Science Enterprise Loan. We also have the Agricultural Machinery Loan, effectively providing service to the leading agricultural technology enterprises. We provide the seed industry revitalization and also make good use of various policy tools. We know that in 2025, the Central Bank and other seven departments issued a series of policy tools to support technology finance.
ABC actively connected and implemented those policies. We support the creation of a technology innovation board in the bond market. The first batch of CNY 20 billion of commercial bank technology innovation bonds were issued, while we increased the underwriting and investment in various market entities in science and technology innovation bonds. Underwrite and investment are at the forefront of the industry. Implement the policy monetary policy tools. We signed a contract amount of loans in technology innovation. Technological transformation has been achieved. We participate in the policy pilot projects.
We were the first to sign a CNY 50 billion Social Security science and technology innovation fund in Zhejiang Yangtze River Delta, and also establish 30 various types of science and technology innovation funds, including establishing of 18 AIC equity investment policy city funds, and we have full coverage of investment. The cumulative lending to SMEs and the technology-based enterprise exceeded CNY 25 billion. Those measures have supported the development of technology innovation. 2026 is the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. We will fully focus and will fire on all cylinders in terms of the technology finance and to empower the new productive forces and provide a service for the economy.
To contribute to accelerate the strength of China's strength in science and technology, first, we will provide service to the modernized industrial system, promote innovation technology integrated with the industrial innovation, focus on the upgrading of traditional industries, focus on the new and future industries, focus on the modernized infrastructures, focus on the major national scientific projects to seize our targeted industries and our customers, enhance our policy and resource support, enhance our professional service capabilities so as to accelerate the formation of new productive forces. Second, we have a full chain, full lifecycle comprehensive or one-stop service.
By adapting to the laws and patterns of the innovation and also the growth pattern of the enterprises, we will invest early, invest in small, and invest in the long term, and invest in the hard technologies, and also continue to enhance our policy and the support system. We upgrade entire chain and entire cycle of the technology finance or financial service solution of ABC. Based on the advantage of ABC's full license investment, lending, bonds, and leasing consulting give full play to the role of AIC in serving technological innovation and equity investment. We work with government agencies and research institutes and VC firms and other financial institutions to meet the comprehensive financial service demands of the enterprises who are customers. We accelerate the promotion application of our data tools.
To adapt to the trend of digital and intelligent development, we deepened the AI plus empowerment of technology and financial service. We coordinated the deployment of our large language models and development of intelligent agents, optimized the service platform for industrial finance, which has registered five million high-quality technology enterprises, enabling precise service capabilities. We also make in-depth use of innovation external data such as innovation points, intellectual property, and investment and loan linkages, optimizing the precise valuation model for technology enterprises, and also use AI agent assistance that enhance our quality in providing service.
Thank you, Mr. Wang. A question online, please pick common question that we haven't touched upon.
Well, this year is the first year for mandatory sustainability information disclosure, and the investors in the capital market are very interested in the sustainability of listed companies. ABC is performing very well in ESG work. What is the progress of sustainable development, and what are the next steps?
Thank you for the question. Well, we will disclose 2025 sustainability development in line with our annual report by in line with the new regulators and benchmarking to the international initiatives, demonstrating the performance of ABC in our sustainable development. We actively implement a national strategy in sustainable development and incorporating the targets in responding to climate change in our day-to-day work management and business operations enhance the resilience to sustainable development, enabling the benefits to all stakeholders. To be more specific, first, we focus on improving our governance and implement Chinese characterized financial governance. We incorporated the party leadership into our work and also enhanced our sustainable, the topics scope of the disclosure of sustainable development.
The BOD is supervising, senior management is implementing, and also the executive level effectively implementing the policies, forming a connected governance chain and enabling the concept of sustainable development into the top-level design of business operations in the 15th Five-Year Plan, and further stimulating the quality and the momentum high-quality development. Second, we'll fully implement the green finance strategy. We still promote our own energy conservation and carbon reduction, actively practice the concept, and take carbon peaking and carbon neutrality as our guide, and actively guide the capital to tilt towards key areas such as carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion and growth in terms of green finance.
Balance of green loan is nearly CNY 6 trillion and equivalent to an annual reduction of 117 billion tons of CO2, and CNY 66 billion of green financial bonds have been issued in China, ranking first in the industry. The balance of green bond investment has increased by 37%. In terms of ESG risk management, we have built ESG evaluation indicator and matrix system for our clients, launched ESG evaluation function for corporate clients. We also explored and conducted climate risk stress test for agricultural, personal housing, and wind power enterprise loans, applying the result of climate risk to such investment and financing management. In terms of our operations, we actively practice green office, green procurement, and green travel.
The total carbon emission per capita of the whole group in 2025 have decreased compared with the previous year. Third, we always put people at the first place, to improve our people, employees' well-being. ABC will have a wide range of stakeholders. We take customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction at our core and/or as our priority, strive to give back to our shareholders, give back to the society, contribute to the society, continuously expand the accessibility of financial service mentioned. ABC will provide service outlets to cover or more than 2,800 county- level areas, and making it the only bank to achieve a full coverage of county- level institutions or outlets.
In 2025, ABC has relocated and built 179 new outlets in rural areas or towns, further fulfilling the rural areas with insufficient financial service. Also in regular provision for mobile financial service has cumulatively served 120,000 rural households. Agricultural service projects has significantly enhanced the service capabilities. We built 3,308 elderly-friendly service outlets with a remote banking hotline providing service to senior customers throughout the year. We have 22,000 warm-hearted union service stations providing considerate service for outdoor workers and new citizens. More than 9,900 public welfare activities were held or launched. ABC has also thoroughly implemented a talent empowerment strategy for professionals and our frontline young employees.
We have implemented major talent projects for key groups, selecting over 2,200 young talents and adding 47,000 talents to talent pools of different levels and types, building 6,115 facilities for workers, striving to create and realize greater value for our shareholders. We also enhanced a two-way interaction in the capital market. For three consecutive years, ABC has led its peers in terms of total market capitalization growth. We have maintained a high dividend payout ratio. We continue to shine the ABC brand through philanthropy with full implementation of four major actions of rural revitalization, protection, care, fulfillment, and through donation, volunteer service, mutual assistance, and other means to benefit the general public.
We also have volunteer service hours exceeding 850,000 hours, and that has also give a recognition and a branding for ABC. Moving forward, we'll continue to follow the rhythm strategy of national system of development, deepening the development of the sustainable management system, and provide a better service to our customers and to our employees, as well as respond to the concerns of the stakeholders to ensure high quality development through the sustainability practices to create a better value to our shareholders through the good sustainable practices. I'll stop here.
We had a very thorough discussion today. For the sake of time, we will have one last question from the Beijing venue.
From Pengp ai News, I have a question on AI. Now, AI is applied widely in banking sector, in the management and business expansions, and a lot of results have been achieved. Mr. Wang also said ABC will vigorously promote application with smart AIs in smart banks. What achievement has been made and what measures have been taken?
Thank you for the question. My colleagues just now in their presentation also touched upon a little bit on the application of AI in Smart Banking development. AI is a buzzword now. ABC also sees opportunities of AI development, so we set up the specific office for Smart Banking development and also enhanced coordination. Also we will focus on the AI agent application, focus on the project, and also we will build AI plus capability system to ensure the smart, inclusive or wide range use of AI.
Last year achievements reflect the following aspects. First, we accelerated our service innovation and product innovation. We kept accelerating the research and development of digital products. We have launched a flying handbag, a way to provide the loans for drone operators. We also have a Farmer e-Loan. Also at the same time, we innovated technology finance credit products. We call that Tech Loan. Scale of online credit business has increased. As at the end of last year, the balance of Agriculture e-Loan was CNY 6.8 trillion, an increase of 18.7% over the end of previous year. Also improved our quality of efficiency of online service. The amount of the active users of personal mobile banking has been leading among the peers.
We also, you know, rolled out the new 5.0 version of the inclusive finance application, built an online inclusive business covering multiple channels. We also have increased the efficiency and effectiveness of smart risk control. In terms of credit risk management, we have the on-site and off-site credit lending due diligence and also deepened automatic identification and comparison of GPS positioning image information. We applied advanced technologies such as AI, generative AI, strengthening multi-dimensional verification of real people, real events, and real scenarios. You know, we also continue to strengthen centralized monitoring.
For the five groups of customers, in terms of the group customers and large- and medium-sized customers, small SME customers, personal loans, and agricultural loans, and also enhance our smart disposal platforms. We have also achieved batch handling or disposal of these cases so that we have promoted NPL disposal. AI can also empower our anti-fraud efforts as well as anti-money laundering. The quality and efficiency have both been improved. This can also help us to reduce our business burdens. For example, in terms of intelligent customer service, we can deepen application of AI models to fill in the forms, for example, and effectively reduce the burdens of frontline agents. The average time required has been shortened to 176 seconds from more than 200 seconds.
We have also sped up the construction or the development of intelligent investigation review report templates. The automatic generation ratio of this report data exceeds over 70%, for small enterprises, credit recipients and group credit. This has reduced the manual workload of credit personnel in drafting. Just now, the AI model mentioned by our senior management can also fulfill the smart or intelligent Q&A session. This function can also empower the consumer protection or compliance in other processes. This AI model, Yiming, has also won many awards. For example, on the recent Consumer Protection Day, March 15, it has also announced that it has won the Financial Consumer Protection Golden Award for 10 outstanding cases in financial technology innovation services. It is quite popular within our bank.
Fourthly, AI is a systematic work, especially in terms of its application in ABC. We have been systematically promoting the application of AI. We already painted or mapped out a blueprint for AI application and compiled the AI capability map. With a platform dedicated to AI application, we can promote its capacity building of computing power to portals, successfully deploying multi-industry leading edge models. This will also help us to develop even more model metrics regarding AI. Next step, with intelligence platform building, we will continue to improve the accuracy and convenience of financial services and also its inclusiveness.
Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. A very big thanks from the bottom of my heart for all of you in participating in this 2025 annual results announcement of ABC. We have implemented the regulatory requirements and implemented an investor-oriented management approach, and also clarified our mechanisms, targets, and approaches for capital market capitalization management. We have upheld high-quality development and highlighted our features as well as serve the real economy as one of the major banks in China and strive to create more value for investors and shareholders and disclose our information in a timely manner. Our stock prices and also valuation have all achieved improvement.
Thank you again, all investors, analysts and friends from the media for your continued interest and support in ABC. I would also like to thank the senior management for your sincere sharing of the operating performance of ABC today. If you have any questions in the future, you are the most welcome to contact ABC's team. That's all for today's result announcement conference. Thank you so much.